“WE DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED THE KINGS BECAUSE WE WANT TO BEAT OUR RIVALS”
A decade and a half ago Klaus Hirsekorn and Alex Baumgartel (K and Alex for Kalex) worked for Holzer Motorsport, which ran Opel’s DTM car-racing operation and still works in the sport, building prototypes for Porsche and other brands.
But Hirsekorn and Baumgartel were motorcycle freaks at heart, so they started building bikes, just for trackday fun. Their first chassis – housing an Aprilia RSV Mille engine – worked so well they put Aussie racer Damian Cudlin on the bike. Straight away Cudlin started winning races.
“We thought, hmm, maybe this thing isn’t so bad,” says Baumgartel, Kalex’s designer. “So we said, okay, let’s quit our jobs and try to survive in the motorcycle world. We wanted to make track bikes.
“The first few years were difficult times, moneywise. We were designing, testing, riding and racing, plus I was doing freelance car work, trying to get some money. Then in 2009 the Moto2 regulations popped up. We said, ‘okay, this is our chance. Let’s invest all we’ve got’.”
The Moto2 world championship replaced the 250cc grand prix category, in which you had no chance of getting a sniff of the champagne podium party unless you had a factory Honda or a million-Euro Aprilia.
Moto2 dramatically reduced costs and gave everyone an equal chance, because
